[P]rosecutors are pressing ahead in the prostitution case against former state senator Norman McAllister following a mistrial earlier this year.
Franklin County Deputy State’s Attorney Diane Wheeler has filed a notice in Franklin County Superior criminal court in St. Albans stating that the prosecution will be refiling a misdemeanor prohibited acts charge against McAllister.
The prosecution alleges that the ex-state senator had prostituted a woman living and working on his Highgate farm to a friend to cover a debt she owed.
In April, Judge Michael Kupersmith declared a mistrial when a juror deliberating in the case reported that he remembered hearing a news report that contained information not introduced into evidence.
That juror was then removed from the panel.
Both the prosecution, and Robert Katims, McAllister’s attorney, agreed that a mistrial was in order because 12 jurors were needed to decide the case. Two alternate jurors had been dismissed when the other jurors started their deliberations.
This week the prosecution refiled the charge against McAllister.
“We’re disappointed,” Katims, McAllister’s attorney, said this week of the prosecution moving forward again with the charge.
“We’re considering refiling the motion to dismiss in the interest of justice now that there’s been a change in circumstances in that there was a whole new trial that didn’t end the prosecution,” the defense attorney said.
Also, Katims said, McAllister has had “some recent health issues,” declining to reveal more specifics.
Wheeler, the prosecutor, could not be reached Friday for comment.
Prior to the latest trial, Katims did file a motion to the dismiss the charge against his client. However, Kupersmith denied that request.
“This is not a rare and unusual case with compelling circumstances that require dismissal to assure fundamental fairness,” Kupersmith wrote in his ruling allowing the misdemeanor charge of prohibited acts against McAllister to proceed to a trial.
To the contrary, the judge added “the seriousness of the offense and the integrity of the judiciary and of the judicial process require that a jury determine the issue of guilt or innocence.”
The trial in April was the third in recent years for McAllister, a former Republican lawmaker arrested for alleged sex crimes in 2015 outside the Vermont Statehouse where he was serving as senator.
More serious charges against him of sexual assault have either been dropped or resulted in acquittals following jury trials.
Katims in his arguments to the jury on the prohibited acts charge during the trial in April, contended McAllister’s accuser, who rented a trailer on the former state senator’s property, made up the allegation against him.
The defense attorney said it was the woman who suggested the prostitution arrangement to help pay for shortfalls in her rent and utility bills.
Lavoie, the prosecutor, countered that McAllister proposed prostituting the woman to a friend to pay for the bills he covered for her.
The woman, in testifying to the jury, stood by her account that McAllister had set up the meeting for her to have sex with his friend in exchange for help with a $70 utility bill.
McAllister did not testify during the trial.
